****
The surviving members of the Gordon Expedition to Angkor Wat stood on the after deck of the ocean liner the RMS Empress of Japan and stared back at Hong Kong in the distance. The ship moved through the churning surf at a little over half of the twenty-three knots; it was capable and was close to its capacity of eleven hundred passengers. It was sure to “fill up” when it docked in Yokahama and Kobe Japan on its way to San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada.
The expedition members had attended a funeral for their colleague Lee Chan and rushed to the ship for the scheduled departure.
Professor Gordon, at his daughter’s insistence, was in a wheel chair but complained at regular intervals that he was “just fine.”
“I know you are just fine, Papa,” she said, “but we want you completely healthy when you have to do all the publicity jaunts in America.”
“It is just nonsense,” the Englishman said. “I am perfectly one hundred percent. It was just a little bump on the head, and it was not related to my heart.”
“I would not argue with her, Henry,” Professor Yamashita said. “You have raised her to be tougher than you are and to out-debate any of us.”
The wheelchair bound professor threw up his arms in surrender. “I can’t fight all of you,” he smiled, “so I will stay in this contraption for now. But I have a dance promised from Lila at the masked ball tonight and I will not be cheated out of it!”
“Only a slow one,” Nyoka said.
“I have no objection to that at all,” Gordon said. “I may be old, but I’m not dead yet!”
They all laughed, even Nyoka when she realized what she had said.
“I hope that leaves Miss Gordon’s dance card free for me.” Dr. Shadows stepped from around the fantail of the Empress.
“Vas es dis?” Gunter asked. His surprised expression made the American crime fighter laugh.
“I may be pale,” Dr. Shadows said, “but I’m not a ghost yet.”
“I for one am glad to see you, son,” Gordon said. He started to rise with an extended had, but the newcomer stepped in and shook the man’s hand before he could leave the chair.
“I’m glad to see you’re feeling better, sir.”
“I thought we’d see you at the service for Chan this morning,” the English professor said.
“I thought I could best serve his memory by working to catch his killer. I was at the autopsy and the lab working on some things.”
“How is it you are on the Empress?” Nyoka asked.
“I was scheduled to return to the states in a week by Pan Am Clipper anyway, so I thought a leisurely sea voyage would do me good.” He smiled in a disarming way. “So, is there time on your dance card?”
This made Nyoka blush, and her father snort with humor.
“What about my dance card?” Lila Von Schultz asked stepping up close to him. “Am I, as you American’s say, ‘chopped liver?’?” She moved her features into a pout and looked at the tall American from behind lowered lashes.
“Anything but,” Dr. Shadows said with a suddenly little boy grin. “I think I would be ready for any dance you are free for.”
Gunter made a disgusted grunt and grabbed his sister’s arm. “We have to get settled in our suite,” he said. “Very good to see you again, Herr Shadows.” It was clear from his tone that it wasn’t, but the German left, pulling his sister behind him.
Lila looked back, waved to the others, and laughed in crystalline tones.
“You really do like to annoy people, don’t you?” Nyoka said. She watched the tall blonde leave and looked at the American from slitted eyes.
“Just a talent I have,” Dr. Shadows said.
“I must also return to my room to attend to some work,” the Japanese professor abruptly said. He bowed to Doctor Gordon and his daughter, barely nodding his head to the American then turned and left.
“I think you two young people have things to talk about,” Doctor Gordon said with a mischievous smirk on his face. “I saw some pretty shuffle board players on the foredeck and I think I’ll see how much sympathy I can garnish with this wheel chair.” He wheeled away before Nyoka had a chance to object, leaving the two alone on the afterdeck.
For a long moment they stood in silence looking out at the disappearing Hong Kong. Nyoka turned to look up at the granite man with her mouth set in a firm line.
“Why are you really on this ship?” she asked.
“You don’t believe I just wanted to take a slow boat from China?”
“I’d like to put you on one back to China,” she said, “but, no, I do not.”
“Alright then,” he said seemingly mindless of her rancorous attitude, “but let’s talk over a drink. I think you may need it when I tell you.” She acquiesced and the two walked back along the ship, down two decks to one of the larger first class lounges. They sat at a booth and waited in stony silence except when they ordered.
When the drinks came he began. “First off, I was in Hong Kong after an affair with a criminal in Harbin City in Manchuria. I stayed to do some teaching and consulting as I said, sending my associates back to the states ahead of me, but I was also pursuing someone.”
“Who?” she asked.
“I don’t know, exactly,” he said.
When she evidenced disbelief, with wide eyes and down turned lips he held up a hand. “I know it sounds strange, but a hunter does not always see his prey, only its spoor, its tracks, and the ‘kills’ it leaves behind. It is the same with the killer—or killers—that I am pursuing. A thief of exceptional ability who has stolen Alfred Munning’s paintings, jewelry of antiquity, and rare artifacts from Mongolia across to Europe and in the states over the last few years. And left behind a series of puzzling murders.”
“This has to do with Lee Chan’s death as well, doesn’t it?”
“Yes I’m afraid it does.” He sipped from the soda pop he had ordered as he spoke. “It has become more personal than I could have ever wanted. Before it was an intellectual puzzle. Now it is an emotional one. The medallion was gone from Chan’s possessions as were some of his notes, though the thief left the drawings of the medallions behind, leading me to believe the killer didn’t care if we had a record of them.”
“We all have copies of each other’s medallions,” she said. “It allowed all of us to continue working independently—I am almost the Sanskrit scholar that Chan was—so it would not have denied us access to the information on the medallions if the killer took those drawings.”
“But would just any old killer have known that?” he asked. “I suspect not. This killer knew the workings of your group thoroughly.”
“To think we have been under a killer’s scrutiny.”
“Speaking of the medallion,” he said quietly, “I hope you are not still wearing it?” His eyes strayed down to where the medallion would be hanging and this made her blush.
“No,” she said, “after the hotel incident I took your advice and put it first in the hotel safe and then in the purser’s safe here on the ship.”
“And the others?”
“I don’t think they took the threat quite as seriously. I know that Professor Yamashita thinks you are an alarmist and Gunter is just cocky enough to feel invulnerable.”
“Not the best circumstance.”
“So who is this super criminal you are pursing, exactly?” She sipped a martini studying the American intently, appraising him as a professional more seriously now that he was not trying to provoke a reaction.
“I can only conjecture,” he said. “Each of the items stolen had some reputed metaphysical significance beyond the monetary value: The rumored Spurs of Genghis Khan, a saddle studded with jewels that Napoleon rode on in the Egypt campaign, jewels reportedly found in a secret tomb. A painting that Munning did a few thousand yards from the German front lines when General Seely's unit was forced into a hasty withdrawal in the Big One. The artist came under shellfire, and it was reported that a German soldier died with his blood spat
tering the painting and his spirit ‘cast’ into the image.”
“That’s all ridiculous—” she began.
“To us perhaps,” he interjected, “but I need to understand the killer’s rationale, not agree with it. Chan had a religious themed object in his possession. It was stolen. All the other objects taken by the killer had some religious or spiritual history or myths associated with them when their owners were murdered; ergo, that is one of the factors.”
“You said ‘owners murdered.’ Who else? “
“A museum curator in Antwerp jumped from a seventh floor window, a private collector in Colorado drowned in a decorative fountain that was barely a foot deep, and the heart of a healthy security guard in London seems to have just ‘given out’. He was literally scared to death by something he saw or experienced during the robbery of the Sword of El Cid in Madrid.”
“They were thrown, or—”
“No,” he said, “there were witnesses that the man who jumped out the window was alone and the evidence was that the man who drowned crawled by himself across unmarked sand to throw himself into the fountain.”
“Then Chan—”
“Very probably was driven by something he saw or felt to throw himself over the veranda. There were no physical signs that he was pushed, no sign of a struggle or other footprints in the soil at the edge.”
“That is horrible; to think that he might have taken his own life. Was there any sign of a drug?”
“There was none directly evidenced in Chan though I saw some anomalies,” the American sleuth said. “Autopsies in three of the other deaths found no trace of drugs of any sort.”
“So you think this—this murderer will keep after the rest of us?”
“If the killer wants a complete set, yes.” He stood and waited for the red head to join him to walk out to the deck. “I have no other way to predict where or when this fiend might strike.”
She stopped walking and stared at him with some of the old fury returning to her eyes. “You mean we are your Judas Goats?”
“I want this tiger, Miss Gordon,” the American said, “and if you were Chan’s friend, you do as well. If I could make myself the target I would, but you and your friends have what he wants so like it or not, you are the goats in this. But, trust me; you will be seeing a lot of me.”
She let the words sink in and nodded with a serious expression. “So then,” she said, “what are you wearing to the costume ball tonight?”
He accepted her olive branch and smiled, “I thought I’d go as Napoleon.” He put his left hand under his jacket and struck a pose.
“Well,” she said before she turned on her heels and headed down the companionway to her suite, “I suggest you walk on your knees. You’re way too tall for the little Corsican, but you have the crazy part down perfectly.”